Healthcare News and Research

[*Anya*]

Dog and human brain link revealed, pet dogs took part in the MRI scanning study

Last updated Feb 20, 2014, 4:52 PM PST

By Rebecca Morelle

Science reporter, BBC World Service

Devoted dog owners often claim that their pets understand them. A new study suggests they could be right.

By placing dogs in an MRI scanner, researchers from Hungary found that the canine brain reacts to voices in the same way that the human brain does.

Emotionally charged sounds, such as crying or laughter, also prompted similar responses, perhaps explaining why dogs are attuned to human emotions.

The work is published in the journal Current Biology.

Lead author Attila Andics, from the Hungarian Academy of Science's Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, said: "We think dogs and humans have a very similar mechanism to process emotional information."

Eleven pet dogs took part in the study; training them took some time.

"We used positive reinforcement strategies - lots of praise," said Dr Andics.

"There were 12 sessions of preparatory training, then seven sessions in the scanner room, then these dogs were able to lie motionless for as long as eight minutes. Once they were trained, they were so happy, I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it."


The canine brain reacted to voices in the same way that the human brain does
For comparison, the team looked at the brains of 22 human volunteers in the same MRI scanners.

The scientists played the people and pooches 200 different sounds, ranging from environmental noises, such as car sounds and whistles, to human sounds (but not words) and dog vocalisations.

The researchers found that a similar region - the temporal pole, which is the most anterior part of the temporal lobe - was activated when both the animals and people heard human voices.

"We do know there are voice areas in humans, areas that respond more strongly to human sounds that any other types of sounds," Dr Andics explained.

"The location (of the activity) in the dog brain is very similar to where we found it in the human brain. The fact that we found these areas exist at all in the dog brain at all is a surprise - it is the first time we have seen this in a non-primate."


The team used a variety of techniques to train the dogs
Emotional sounds, such as crying and laughter also had a similar pattern of activity, with an area near the primary auditory cortex lighting up in dogs and humans.

Likewise, emotionally charged dog vocalisations - such as whimpering or angry barking - also caused a similar reaction in all volunteers,

Dr Andics said: "We know very well that dogs are very good at tuning into the feelings of their owners, and we know a good dog owner can detect emotional changes in his dog - but we now begin to understand why this can be."

However, while the dogs responded to the human voice, their reactions were far stronger when it came to canine sounds.

They also seemed less able to distinguish between environmental sounds and vocal noises compared with humans.

About half of the whole auditory cortex lit up in dogs when listening to these noises, compared with 3% of the same area in humans.

Commenting on the research, Prof Sophie Scott, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said: "Finding something like this in a primate brain isn't too surprising - but it is quite something to demonstrate it in dogs.

"Dogs are a very interesting animal to look at - we have selected for a lot of traits in dogs that have made them very amenable to humans. Some studies have show they understand a lot of words and they understand intentionality - pointing."

But she added: "It would be interesting to see the animal's response to words rather than just sounds. When we cry and laugh, they are much more like animal calls and this might be causing this response.

"A step further would be if they had gone in and shown sensitivity to words in the language their owners speech."

Dr Andics said this would be the focus of his next set of experiments.


BBC © 2014

[*Anya*]

Last updated Feb 23, 2014, 6:28 PM PST

By Toby Macdonald

With every decision you take, every judgement you make, there is a battle in your mind - a battle between intuition and logic.

And the intuitive part of your mind is a lot more powerful than you may think.

Most of us like to think that we are capable of making rational decisions. We may at times rely on our gut instinct, but if necessary we can call on our powers of reason to arrive at a logical decision.

We like to think that our beliefs, judgements and opinions are based on solid reasoning. But we may have to think again.

Prof Daniel Kahneman, from Princeton University, started a revolution in our understanding of the human mind. It's a revolution that led to him winning a Nobel Prize.

His insight into the way our minds work springs from the mistakes that we make. Not random mistakes, but systematic errors that we all make, all the time, without realising.

Prof Kahneman and his late colleague Amos Tversky, who worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University, realised that we actually have two systems of thinking. There's the deliberate, logical part of your mind that is capable of analysing a problem and coming up with a rational answer.

This is the part of your mind that you are aware of. It's expert at solving problems, but it is slow, requires a great deal of energy, and is extremely lazy. Even the act of walking is enough to occupy most of your attentive mind.

Daniel Kahneman's insights into the mind spring from the systematic errors we make all the time
If you are asked to solve a tricky problem while walking, you will most likely stop because your attentive mind cannot attend to both tasks at the same time. If you want to test your own ability to pay attention, try the invisible gorilla test devised by Chris Chabris, from Union College, New York, and Daniel Simons from the University of Illinois.

But then there is another system in your mind that is intuitive, fast and automatic. This fast way of thinking is incredibly powerful, but totally hidden. It is so powerful, it is actually responsible for most of the things that you say, do, think and believe.

And yet you have no idea this is happening. This system is your hidden auto-pilot, and it has a mind of its own. It is sometimes known as the stranger within.

Most of the time, our fast, intuitive mind is in control, efficiently taking charge of all the thousands of decisions we make each day. The problem comes when we allow our fast, intuitive system to make decisions that we really should pass over to our slow, logical system. This is where the mistakes creep in.

Our thinking is riddled with systematic mistakes known to psychologists as cognitive biases. And they affect everything we do. They make us spend impulsively, be overly influenced by what other people think. They affect our beliefs, our opinions, and our decisions, and we have no idea it is happening.

It may seem hard to believe, but that's because your logical, slow mind is a master at inventing a cover story. Most of the beliefs or opinions you have come from an automatic response. But then your logical mind invents a reason why you think or believe something.

Dr Laurie Santos studies monkeys to learn how deep seated our biases really are
According to Daniel Kahneman, "if we think that we have reasons for what we believe, that is often a mistake. Our beliefs and our wishes and our hopes are not always anchored in reasons".

Since Kahneman and Tversky first investigated this radical picture of the mind, the list of identified cognitive biases has mushroomed. The "present bias" causes us to pay attention to what is happening now, but not to worry about the future. If I offer you half a box of chocolates in a year's time, or a whole box in a year and a day, you'll probably choose to wait the extra day.

But if I offer you half a box of chocolates right now, or a whole box of chocolates tomorrow, you will most likely take half a box of chocolates now. It's the same difference, but waiting an extra day in a year's time seems insignificant. Waiting a day now seems impossible when faced with the immediate promise of chocolate.

According to Prof Dan Ariely, from Duke University in North Carolina, this is one of the most important biases: "That's the bias that causes things like overeating and smoking and texting and driving and having unprotected sex," he explains.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that confirms what we already know. It's why we tend to buy a newspaper that agrees with our views. There's the hindsight bias, the halo effect, the spotlight effect, loss aversion and the negativity bias.

This is the bias that means that negative events are far more easily remembered than positive ones. It means that for every argument you have in a relationship, you need to have five positive memories just to maintain an even keel.

We feel the pain of financial loss much more than the pleasure of a gain
The area of our lives where these cognitive biases cause most grief is anything to do with money. It was for his work in this area that Prof Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize - not for psychology (no such prize exists) but for economics. His insights led to a whole new branch of economics - behavioural economics.

Kahneman realised that we respond very differently to losses than to gains. We feel the pain of a loss much more than we feel the pleasure of a gain. He even worked out by how much. If you lose £10 today, you will feel the pain of the loss. But if you find some money tomorrow, you will have to find more than £20 to make up for the loss of £10. This is loss aversion, and its cumulative effect can be catastrophic.

One difficulty with the traditional economic view is that it tends to assume that we all make rational decisions. The reality seems to be very different. Behavioural economists are trying to form an economic system based on the reality of how we actually make decisions.

Dan Ariely argues that the implications of ignoring this research are catastrophic: "I'm quite certain if the regulators listened to behavioural economists early on we would have designed a very different financial system, and we wouldn't have had the incredible increase in the housing market and we wouldn't have this financial catastrophe," he says.

These biases affect us all, whether we are choosing a cup of coffee, buying a car, running an investment bank or gathering military intelligence.

Humans aren't the only species that shows loss aversion.

So what are we to do? Dr Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University, has been investigating how deep seated these biases really are. Until we know the evolutionary origins of these two systems of thinking, we won't know if we can change them.

Dr Santos taught a troop of monkeys to use money. It's called monkeynomics, and she wanted to find out whether monkeys would make the same stupid mistakes as humans. She taught the monkeys to use tokens to buy treats, and found that monkeys also show loss aversion - making the same mistakes as humans.

Her conclusion is that these biases are so deep rooted in our evolutionary past, they may be impossible to change.

"What we learn from the monkeys is that if this bias is really that old, if we really have had this strategy for the last 35 million years, simply deciding to overcome it is just not going to work. We need other ways to make ourselves avoid some of these pitfalls," she explained.

We may not be able to change ourselves, but by being aware of our cognitive limitations, we may be able to design the environment around us in a way that allows for our likely mistakes.

Dan Ariely sums it up: "We are limited, we are not perfect, we are irrational in all kinds of ways. But we can build a world that is compatible with this that gets us to make better decisions rather than worse decisions. That's my hope."

HORIZON: How You Really Make Decisions is on Monday 24 February, 9pm, BBC2

BBC © 2014

[*Anya*]

Last updated Feb 27, 2014, 3:03 AM PST

By James Gallagher

Health and science reporter, BBC News

How the creation of babies using sperm and eggs from three people will be regulated in the UK has been announced.

The draft rules will be reviewed as part of a public consultation and could come into force by the end of 2014.

Doctors say three-person IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal diseases that are passed from mother to child.

Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a "slippery slope" to designer babies.

Using the parents' sperm and eggs plus an additional egg from a donor woman should prevent mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondria are the tiny, biological "power stations" that provide energy to nearly every cell of the body.

One in every 6,500 babies has severe mitochondrial disease leaving them lacking energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and even death.

As mitochondria are passed down from mother to child, using an extra egg from a donor woman could give the child healthy mitochondria.

However, it would also result in babies having DNA from two parents and a tiny amount from the donor as mitochondria have their own DNA.

Scientists have devised two techniques that allow them to take the genetic information from the mother and place it into the egg of a donor with healthy mitochondria.

The Department of Health has already backed the technique and says this consultation is not about whether it should be allowed, but how it is implemented.

The regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, will have to decide in each cases that there is a "significant risk" of disability or serious illness.

It is anticipated that only the most severely affected women - perhaps 10 cases per year - would go ahead.

The regulations suggest treating the donor woman in the same manner as an organ donor.

Any resulting children will not be able to discover the identity of the donor, which is the case with other sperm and egg donors.

Prof Doug Turnbull, who has pioneered research in mitochondrial donation at Newcastle University, said: "I am delighted that the government has published the draft regulations.

"This is very good news for patients with mitochondrial DNA disease and an important step in the prevention of transmission of serious mitochondrial disease."

The chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said: "Allowing mitochondrial donation would give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders.

"It would also keep the UK at the forefront of scientific development in this area.

"I want to encourage contributions to this consultation so that we have as many views as possible before introducing our final regulations."

Dr David King, the director of Human Genetics Alert, said this was a decision of "major historical significance" which had not been debated adequately.

"If passed, this will be the first time any government has legalised inheritable human genome modification, something that is banned in all other European countries.

"The techniques have not passed the necessary safety tests so it is unnecessary and premature to rush ahead with legalisation.

"The techniques are unethical according to basic medical ethics, since their only advantage over standard and safe egg donation is that the mother is genetically related to her child.

"This cannot justify the unknown risks to the child or the social consequences of allowing human genome modification."

BBC © 2014

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26367220

[*Anya*]

Last updated Mar 6, 2014, 3:55 AM PST

By James Gallagher

Health and science reporter, BBC News

HIV budding out of a T-cell, part of the immune system.

Doctors have used gene therapy to upgrade the immune system of 12 patients with HIV to help shield them from the virus's onslaught.

It raises the prospect of patients no longer needing to take daily medication to control their infection.

The patients' white blood cells were taken out of the body, given HIV resistance and then injected back in.

The small study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggested the technique was safe.

Some people are born with a very rare mutation that protects them from HIV.

It changes the structure of their T-cells, a part of the immune system, so that the virus cannot get inside and multiply.

The first person to recover from HIV, Timothy Ray Brown, had his immune system wiped out during leukaemia treatment and then replaced with a bone marrow transplant from someone with the mutation.

Now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are adapting patients' own immune systems to give them that same defence.

Millions of T-cells were taken from the blood and grown in the laboratory until the doctors had billions of cells to play with.

The team then edited the DNA inside the T-cells to give them the shielding mutation - known as CCR5-delta-32.

About 10 billion cells were then infused back in, although only around 20% were successfully modified.

When patients were taken off their medication for four weeks, the number of unprotected T-cells still in the body fell dramatically, whereas the modified T-cells seemed to be protected and could still be found in the blood several months later.

Replacement therapy?
The trial was designed to test only the safety and feasibility of the method, not whether it could replace drug treatment in the long term.


Prof Bruce Levine, the director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC: "This is a first - gene editing has not to date been used in a human trial [for HIV].

"We've been able to use this technology in HIV and show it is safe and feasible, so it is an evolution in the treatment of HIV from daily antiretroviral therapy."

He says the aim is to develop a therapy that gets people away from expensive daily medication.

"What if we can now take the leap to an upfront treatment that can last for years?"

Such a treatment will be expensive so any benefit will depend on how long people could be freed from drugs and how long that protection would last.

Prof Levine argues this could be several years, which might save money in the long term.

Commenting on the findings, Prof Sharon Lewin from Monash University in Australia, told BBC News: "The idea of modifying a T-cell to make it resistant and showing it is feasible and they survive - that's exciting in itself.

"What most people are aiming for in HIV is a way you take treatment for a short period of time and that keeps the virus under control."

She said drug treatment would not be replaced by this, especially in the early stages of the infection.

But it might lead to people eventually replacing drugs with an immune upgrade, but "it's still a long way off".

[*Anya*]

March 27, 2014

The two human cases are linked to nine cases of Mycobacterium bovis infection in cats in Berkshire and Hampshire last year.

Both people were responding to treatment, PHE said.

It said the risk of cat-to-human transmission of M. bovis remained "very low"

Dr Dilys Morgan, Public Health England: These are the first documented cases of cat-to-human transmission...”

M. bovis is the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in cattle, known as bovine TB, and other species.

Transmission of M. bovis from infected animals to humans can occur by breathing in or ingesting bacteria shed by the animal or through contamination of unprotected cuts in the skin while handling infected animals or their carcasses.

Screening tests
The nine cases of M. bovis infection in cats in Berkshire and Hampshire were investigated by PHE and the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) during 2013.

The findings of the investigation are published in the Veterinary Record on Thursday

What is tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by a germ which usually affects the lungs.

Symptoms can take several months to appear and include

•Fever and night sweats

•Persistent cough

•Losing weight

•Blood in your phlegm or spit

Almost all forms of TB are treatable and curable, but delays in detection and treatment can be damaging.

TB caused by M. bovis is diagnosed in less than 40 people in the UK each year. The majority of these cases are in people over 65 years old.

Overall, human TB caused by M. bovis accounts for less than 1% of the 9,000 TB cases diagnosed in the UK every year.

Those working closely with livestock and/or regularly drinking unpasteurised (raw) milk have a greater risk of exposure.

Public Health England
Screening was offered to people who had had contact with the infected cats. Following further tests, a total of two cases of active TB were identified.

Molecular analysis showed that M. bovis taken from the infected cats matched the strain of TB found in the human cases, indicating that the bacterium was transmitted from an infected cat.

Two cases of latent TB were also identified, meaning they had been exposed to TB at some point, but they did not have the active disease.

PHE said it was not possible to confirm whether these were caused by M. bovis or something else.

No further cases of TB in cats have been reported in Berkshire or Hampshire since March 2013.

'Uncommon in cats'
Dr Dilys Morgan, head of gastrointestinal, emerging and zoonotic diseases department at PHE, said: "It's important to remember that this was a very unusual cluster of TB in domestic cats.

"M. bovis is still uncommon in cats - it mainly affects livestock animals.

"These are the first documented cases of cat-to-human transmission, and so although PHE has assessed the risk of people catching this infection from infected cats as being very low, we are recommending that household and close contacts of cats with confirmed M. bovis infection should be assessed and receive public health advice."

Out of the nine cats infected, six died and three are currently undergoing treatment.

Prof Noel Smith, head of the bovine TB genotyping group at the AHVLA, said testing of nearby herds had revealed a small number of infected cattle with the same strain of M. bovis as the cats.

However, he said direct contact between the cats and these cattle was unlikely.

"The most likely source of infection is infected wildlife, but cat-to-cat transmission cannot be ruled out."

Cattle herds with confirmed cases of bovine TB in the area have all been placed under movement restrictions to prevent the spread of disease.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26766006

[*Anya*]

Doctors implant lab-grown vagina

Last updated Apr 10, 2014, 5:45 PM PST

By James Gallagher

Health and science reporter, BBC News

Experts said the study, published in the Lancet, was the latest example of the power of regenerative medicine.

In each woman the vagina did not form properly while they were still inside their mother's womb, a condition known as vaginal aplasia.

Current treatments can involve surgically creating a cavity, which is then lined with skin grafts or parts of the intestine.

The scaffold is made of a biodegradable material

Doctors at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in North Carolina used pioneering technology to build vaginas for the four women who were all in their teenage years at the time.

Scans of the pelvic region were used to design a tube-like 3D-scaffold for each patient.

A small tissue biopsy was taken from the poorly developed vulva and grown to create a large batch of cells in the laboratory.

Muscle cells were attached to the outside of the scaffold and vaginal-lining cells to the inside.

The vaginas were carefully grown in a bioreactor until they were suitable to be surgically implanted into the patients.

One of the women with an implanted vagina, who wished to keep her name anonymous, said: "I believe in the beginning when you find out you feel different.

"I mean while you are living the process, you are seeing the possibilities you have and all the changes you'll go through.

"Truly I feel very fortunate because I have a normal life, completely normal."

'An important thing'

All the women reported normal sexual function.

Vaginal aplasia can lead to other abnormalities in the reproductive organs, but in two of the women the vagina was connected to the uterus.

There have been no pregnancies, but for those women it is theoretically possible.

The scaffold is placed in an incubator

Dr Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest, told the BBC News website: "Really for the first time we've created a whole organ that was never there to start with, it was a challenge."

He said a functioning vagina was a "very important thing" for these women's lives and witnessing the difference it made to them "was very rewarding to see".

This is the first time the results have been reported. However, the first implants took place eight years ago.

'Most important questions'

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland have used similar techniques to reconstruct the noses of patients after skin cancer.

The other side of the scaffold is coated with smooth muscle cells before it is incubated a second time

It could replace the need to take cartilage from the ribs or ears in order to rebuild the damage caused by cutting the cancer away.

Prof Martin Birchall, who has worked on lab-grown windpipes, commented: "These authors have not only successfully treated several patients with a difficult clinical problem, but addressed some of the most important questions facing translation of tissue engineering technologies.

The steps between first-in-human experiences such as those reported here and their use in routine clinical care remain many, including larger trials with long-term follow-up, the development of clinical grade processing, scale-out, and commercialisation."

BBC © 2014

[Kobi]

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Each morning around 6, Mary Ellen Snodgrass swallows a computer chip. It’s embedded in one of her pills and roughly the size of a grain of sand. When it hits her stomach, it transmits a signal to her tablet computer indicating that she has successfully taken her heart and thyroid medications.

“See,” said Snodgrass, checking her online profile page. With a few swipes she brings up an hourly timeline of her day with images of white pills marking the times she ingested a chip. “I can see it go in. The pill just jumped onto the screen.”

Snodgrass — a 91-year-old retired schoolteacher who has been trying out the smart pills at the behest of her son, an employee at the company that makes the technology — is at the forefront of what many predict will be a revolution in medicine powered by miniature chips, sensors, cameras and robots with the ability to access, analyze and manipulate your body from the inside.

As the size and cost of chip technology has fallen dramatically over the past few years, dozens of companies and academic research teams are rushing to make ingestible or implantable chips that will help patients track the condition of their bodies in real time and in a level of detail that they have never seen before.

Several have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including a transponder containing a person’s medical history that is injected under the skin, a camera pill that can search the colon for tumors, and the technology, made by Proteus Digital Health, that Snodgrass is using. That system is being used to make sure older people take their pills; it involves navigating a tablet and wearing a patch, which some patients might find challenging.

Scientists are working on more advanced prototypes. Nanosensors, for example, would live in the bloodstream and send messages to smartphones whenever they saw signs of an infection, an impending heart attack or another issue — essentially serving as early-warning beacons for disease. Armies of tiny robots with legs, propellers, cameras and wireless guidance systems are being developed to diagnose diseases, administer drugs in a targeted manner and even perform surgery.

But while the technology may be within reach, the idea of putting little machines into the human body makes some uncomfortable, and there are numerous uncharted scientific, legal and ethical questions that need to be thought through.

What kind of warnings should users receive about the risks of implanting chip technology inside a body, for instance? How will patients be assured that the technology won’t be used to compel them to take medications they don’t really want to take? Could law enforcement obtain data that would reveal which individuals abuse drugs or sell them on the black market? Could what started as a voluntary experiment be turned into a compulsory government identification program that could erode civil liberties?

In 2002, when silicon chips containing their medical records were injected into some Alzheimer’s patients, it was deeply unsettling to privacy advocates. Several states subsequently passed legislation outlawing the forced implantations, and the technology never took off.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he worries about the coercive use of the chips — whether they are implanted for a few months or permanently, or are swallowed and last in the body only about a day.

“There’s something very troubling about a chip being placed in a person that they can’t remove,” he said.

Proponents of the technology, however, say the devices could save countless lives and billions of dollars in unnecessary medical bills.

Eric Topol is the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and has written a book about the digital revolution in health care. He said he believes the science is moving so quickly that many of these gadgets will be ready for commercial use within the next five years.

“The way a car works is that it has sensors and it tells you what’s wrong. Why not put the same type of technology in the body? It could warn you weeks or months or even years before something happens,” Topol said.

Refining the technology

The ingestible chip that Snodgrass is using — it was the first smart pill to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the European Union, in 2012 and 2010, respectively — is still being tested by a handful of doctors and hospitals, as the company continues to refine its software. Proteus officials say they hope to make it more widely available within the next year.

Britain’s National Health Service has begun using the technology with heart patients to figure out whether it can increase compliance with prescribed medication. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has said it would seek FDA clearance to use the Proteus chips in the medications it makes for transplant patients to minimize the chance of organ rejection.

In the United States, the focus has been the elderly.

Made entirely of edible ingredients, the one-square-millimeter chip has copper on one side and magnesium on the other, and it is activated when it comes into contact with stomach acids. It’s used in conjunction with a patch, which is shaped like a large Band-Aid and worn on the torso. For five minutes after being swallowed, the chip sends out a unique 16-digit code that is picked up by the patch, which in turn beams the information to a nearby smartphone or tablet — where it can be shared via the Internet with family members, doctors and the company.

The patch contains additional sensors that tracks things such as temperature, heart rate, movement (whether someone is standing, sitting or lying flat) and sleep.

George Savage, a co-founder and chief medical officer of Proteus, said studies show that 50 percent of patients do not take their medications as prescribed and that allowing doctors to see whether patients actually take the drugs — and their reactions to the medicine — could help them figure out better treatments.

“It may be wasteful for an oncologist to see a particular patient every few months. Maybe all they need is a nurse if everything is going well,” Savage said. “Or, maybe if they are not taking their medications, they need a psychologist or social worker instead.”

On a recent weekday, Snodgrass’ son, Doug Webb, a 62-year-old electrical engineer, brought up a Web page with his mother’s name and a slew of charts and numbers. Snodgrass is in good health for her age and pretty good about taking her medications, but she lives alone. Webb worries that she might accidentally skip some doses as she gets older.

“With all the traffic here, I can only make it down to see her once a week, so this is a way for me to check in on her more often,” Webb said.

His mother has been taking the smart pills since December, so Webb knows her schedule well. A few months ago, after Webb’s stepfather was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, Webb could see the effects of that news in his mother’s data: She was sleeping irregularly and sometimes could not get in her daily walk around the golf course near her house because she didn’t want to leave his side. One day, she forgot to take her pills and didn’t realize it until Webb pointed out a gap in her data.

“Sometimes I see very strange numbers and I’ll call her up and say, ‘What’s going on?’ ” he said.

On this day, Webb could see that his mother has taken one set of pills shortly after 6 a.m. and another at 10 a.m. It looked like she had been reading in her chair in the morning as usual and had been pretty active the rest of the day, taking more than 5,000 steps. All in all, he thought, it looked like she had had a good day. But just to make sure, he made it a point to remind himself to call her during his commute home.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...5c0_story.html